Denise Koch

Viewers turn to Denise Koch and Vic Carter — anchors of WJZ 13’s Eyewitness News at 4:30, 6 and 11 p.m.— for their credible reports presented by the veteran news team in Baltimore.

The Emmy Award–winning journalist has traveled to China, West Africa and Jamaica to report the news. She’s also covered the homefront from around the U.S. and from every corner of our state, bringing local, national and world events into sharp focus for Channel 13 viewers.

Even sports fans went with Denise as she covered Baltimore’s search for an NFL team in Chicago to the Ravens’ quest for the Super Bowl trophy in Tampa.

Denise’s first introduction to WJZ viewers was on “Evening Magazine” where she was known as “Daring Denise,” tackling sports from hang gliding to scuba.

She joined the newsroom as a lifestyle reporter, reviewing plays and films and filing stories twice a day on the arts and creative side of life.

For a number of years, viewers were given an intimate portrait of fascinating Marylanders on her interview program “Get To Know.”

She followed struggling high school students for four years as they participated in the “Futures” program. That series earned her both a Maryland State Teachers Award and a National Angels Award. And it was with high school students she traveled to Senegal to discover the roots of slavery. That series was later shown at museums and at the National Post Office in the nation’s capital.

Her work has garnered Denise a host of awards in addition to the aforementioned Emmy. Her reporting has been nominated for Emmys six times. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded her a prize for her documentary on Baltimore teachers in China, “Baltimore East.”

Denise, a California native, attended UCLA where she earned the prestigious Natalie Wood Award for her talents. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts and then received her master’s from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Her acting career took her to theatres around the country and even to the soap opera “Another World,” eventually bringing her to Center Stage where she also served as literary manager. She has taught at UMBC, University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin.

For more than two decades Denise has been on WJZ’s anchor desk, one of the most respected broadcast journalists in town and also one of the most versatile.

Her work in the community is very important to her. She’s been on the advisory boards of the Hospice Network of Maryland, Success in Style (clothing women re-entering the workforce) and the Maryland Committee for the Children. She is on the president’s advisory council for the University of Notre Dame, Maryland. For 10 years she was a member of the Howard County Arts Council and is currently a board member of the United Way of Central Maryland as well as a member of their women’s leadership council.

Long before the sun comes up, many Maryland families are trying to beat the clock to make it to school on time. But new research shows it’s actually unhealthy to drag teens out of bed so early. Now several Maryland counties are considering whether they should change school start times.

The issue of guns is front and center in Annapolis. The Maryland House of Delegates has passed the preliminary gun control bill, which means that it has passed the second reader. The final vote is Wednesday.

Until the highly publicized murder of Cockeysville’s Yeardley Love by her boyfriend, dating violence was something many young women didn’t think could happen to them. That’s why Yeardley’s mother and sister are on a mission–to get the word out before it’s too late.

Many people know former Orioles executive Jim Duquette, who now broadcasts on WJZ-FM The Fan. But few know the pain his family has lived with for years. Like so many others in this country, Duquette’s little girl needed a kidney transplant to live.

It wasn’t rain and wind but three feet of snow that’s left much of Western Maryland crippled. In Garrett County, 70 percent of people still have no power with temperatures in the low 30s Thursday night.